"It
ends up feeling like we arrived through a bad
dream in Neverland."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A slick looking French high-tech corporate thriller
directed with style over substance by Olivier Assayas
("Late August, Early September"/"Les destinees/"Irma
Vep"). It was difficult to get concerned about the
fate of such cold, soulless, and unfeeling corporate
types battling for power, status and money. It's a
film that presents no hero, only people who are
beginning to resemble animated androids. The steely
blue photography used by cinematographer Denis Lenoir
creates the chilly sterile atmosphere for the
power-hungry corporate players (mostly female) to swim
in a sea of corruption. Purposely remaining
incomprehensible and inanely hip, the film takes on an
almost mindless video game look. It's different from
any other film of Assayas', which is not necessarily a
good thing.

Based on the novel by William Gibson it plays as a
shotgun marriage between art and sleaze, fitting
itself into the cult film category where there will be
a surefire audience. It bristles with the pulsating
score by Sonic Youth, a high-powered international
cast, an absurd plot, a modern world's viewpoint, and
knowingly peeks into cutting-edge anime and
cyber-porn. It does all this to point out that what
you see is only what you think you see. Ultimately,
it's about dangerous mind games played for high
stakes, which in the end takes away everybody's
humanity and blurs any moral boundaries. It leaves
this message without, at least, also dumping some
bogus philosophy on us as did other movies with a
similar theme such as The Matrix.

The VolfGroup, a French-based company, is about to
close a big merger deal with TokyoAnime, an animation
company that provides pornographic comic books and
anime films. The innovative Tokyo company needs mucho
capital to develop its latest 3-D animation
technology, and is therefore anxious for the deal to
be finalized. Volf (Jean-Baptise Malartre) relies on
Karen to finalize the deal, but she's drugged and
kidnapped upon her return from setting up the deal in
Japan. When found in the trunk of her new black Audi
TT 18 hours later, she becomes unavailable to carry
out her assignment. Not wasting a sec, Volf hires his
assistant, Diane (Connie Nielsen), to take her place
and sends her to Tokyo with her immediate boss, the
sex-driven Hervé (Charles Berling). The deal is
closed but it turns out Diane is a mole for a
competing company called Magnatronics, who will soon
lose their niche in the market to Internet rival
Demonlover, an American-based company, unless
something is done to derail the rival. That's where
spy Diane earns her dirty paycheck as she does
everything possible to sabotage Demonlover from
gaining an exclusive rights deal with the VolfGroup,
including connecting them to a popular with teenagers
fantasy interactive torture web site called "The
Hellfire Club."

We follow Diane's lustful romance with Hervé,
that chills after Tokyo, then how she deals in a
criminal way with the tough-minded American
businesswoman Elaine (Gina Gershon) sent over to
negotiate the deal. Finally, we see how she has to
deal with her mortal enemy, the long-suffering
assistant Elise (Chloe Sevigny), who is extremely
hostile and resents that Diane took over for Karen and
the way the bitchy ice queen treats her with
contempt.

The workplace environment is viewed as amoral and
inhuman, and peddling smut doesn't mean anything to
the corporate types because they have already lost
their humanity. In this cutthroat environment, where
the deceitful power-brokers know no boundaries for
their reach, anything seems to go if you can get away
with it. The film gives us the illusion that it
shuffles back and forth from Tokyo to Paris to the
United States, as it ends up feeling like we arrived
through a bad dream in Neverland. Though riveting in
its dizzying fast pace, the film never got past my
original confusion about what I was seeing and that I
didn't care about a single character.